Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
The Art of Fugue BWV 1080
Gustav Leonhardt — harpsichord
Recorded May 1953, Vienna
VANGUARD OVC 2011/12 [86:56]
Reissued: BRILLIANT CLASSICS
Historical recordings carry their burdens along with their revelations. This 1953 Leonhardt—the Dutch master at twenty-five, already formidable—captures a pivotal moment when early music performance was still finding its voice, or rather, its harpsichord. Leonhardt’s pamphlet arguing for keyboard exclusivity in The Art of Fugue had yet to appear, but the thinking was already there, coalescing in these grooves.
The problem announces itself immediately. The instrument itself. Whatever harpsichord Leonhardt found in Vienna that May—and one suspects the pickings were slim in postwar Europe—it sounds pinched, metallic, desperately thin in the bass register where Bach’s contrapuntal architecture needs foundation.
The low notes don’t resonate; they clatter. In Contrapunctus IV, where the subject inverts and prowls the lower octaves, you hear hollow tapping rather than the gravitas Bach surely intended. This isn’t entirely the fault of 1950s recording technology, though that contributes its share of brittleness.
The instrument simply wasn’t up to the task. Yet Leonhardt’s interpretive intelligence shines through the sonic limitations like sunlight through prison bars. His tempi are deliberate—some would say glacial—but there’s method here.
Unlike his contemporaneous Goldberg Variations (also exhumed by Vanguard), where slowness became lethargy, the — measured pacing in The Art of Fugue allows the contrapuntal lines to breathe and separate. You can actually follow the voices, trace their entrances and exits. In Contrapunctus IX, the double fugue at the twelfth, his tempo lets you hear how Bach constructs his edifice brick by brick.
But then—Contrapunctus VII. The “Simple Fugue, theme inverted” as the notes call it. Here Leonhardt miscalculates badly.
The tempo is so funereal that the music loses forward motion entirely, becoming an academic exercise rather than living art. This is precisely what Leonhardt spent his career arguing against: the reduction of Bach to didactic demonstration. The irony stings.
That particular brightness of period instruments catches the ear.
The final, unfinished fugue presents its own catastrophe. The harpsichord sounds distinctly out of tune by this point—whether from the Vienna humidity or simple mechanical failure, who knows—and Bach’s last testament emerges wavering and uncertain. It’s almost unbearable, this great composer’s final thoughts filtered through an instrument that can’t hold pitch.
The famous moment where the manuscript breaks off, where Bach’s hand stopped writing, arrives not with tragic grandeur but with something closer to relief. Leonhardt recognized all this. He returned to The Art of Fugue for Teldec with better instruments, matured understanding, more sympathetic production venues.
That later set supersedes this one in every practical sense. So why listen now? Because occasionally we need to hear how ideas precede their full realization.
Because Leonhardt at twenty-five was already thinking with a clarity that would reshape baroque performance practice. Because historical documents matter even—especially—when they’re flawed. But if you simply want to hear The Art of Fugue on harpsichord, played well, recorded properly?
Davitt Moroney’s Harmonia Mundi or Robert Hill’s Brilliant set will serve you infinitely better. This Vanguard reissue is for scholars, completists, and those fascinated by how we got from there to here. Everyone else should look elsewhere.
A document of courage and audacity, yes. A successful execution? Not quite.
